Selfie with touring cyclist Darby. Carrying twice as much luggage, including essentials for a 3 month tour.... a ukelele!

Yeongangsang bike path

5-18 Memorial

Gwanju Biennale

Bamboo Forest

He doesn't look too impressed...

That hut was convenient, but very draughty. Including the slats on the floor. By 4h30 I had already given up trying to sleep as it was also damned cold. So once the sleeping bag was stuffed away, I pottered on my way - to rejoin the Yongsangang bike path.

The road was mostly dark which is when the chain decided to go AWOL and promptly fell off Nothing major. In fact I only mention it as in all of the 680+ km route, that was the /only/ incident I had with the bike!

As dawn struck I found myself on a very major road that eventually became dual carriageway. Perhaps that is why the statues looked unimpressed with a lone cyclist.

I rejoined the bike path at Naju but not before a couple cups of coffee and breakfast. Not bad with 50k already under my belt;

Yeongangsang Bicycle Path (133km) : Mokpo to Damyangdam

The Yongangsang bicycle trail forms one of the 4 major tourist bike routes in Korea - an offshoot of the revitalisation of Koreas waterways. One of the results of such a restoration is that there are dedicated bike and footpaths along the whole of the river. At each point of interest, before and after photos are printed to inform the public on how that area was transformed. The whole restoration project is not without controversy, however.﻿4 Rivers Guide (English)Environmental fallout of the Four Rivers Project (The Hankyoreh)

20km later, I managed to get my cycling "passport" , something I failed to do in Mokpo two days previously

Despite the controversy, it made for very calm, stress free cycling.

5-18 Memorial

The trail goes through a major city, Gwanju. This city is infamous for the May 18th uprising in 1980, when civilians protested for democracy. There was massive bloodshed and many deaths. To this day, the numbers that died are unknown. A memorial has been built in the centre of the city where there are interesting, grusome and sad photographs on display.

On a lighter note, Gwanju also hosts an exposition every second year. As I was in Gwangu, I thought I'd have a look. Unfortunately due to my crap navigational skills I lost an hour trying to find the place, so I didn't get to absorb a lot of stuff, especially the video art. Still, the first piece of work was very interesting in all of its three dimensional glory (see second image, below)

Under way again, I made my destination, blurry eyed, in Damyang. I must apologise to Darby, a Korean who I met here. I was so out of it that I must have appeared to be a bit of a zombie- he was into his 57'th day and planning to continue cycling Korea until the end of the year. I honestly didnt think that Korea was that big. Hope to catch up with him again when he comes to Jeju.

Damyang (Photos: Duck Sung Darby Jung)

Damyang Bamboo Forest

Before the light totally faded, I visited the bamboo forest. They told me I had to rush as I only had 30 minutes. So rush I did, got out in time, only to see all the staff walk away, not closing anything, and allowing people to enter for free! Oh well!

No open fields and neatly cropped stately avenues here... Yuyuan gardens is wedged into the city and contains many traditional buildings wedged between water features, walls and dragons. Each rooftop had its own set of statue sculptures - you needed to look up as well as down!

The gardens are a mix of greenery and wood. Despite being in the middle of Shanghai, the area is mostly quiet - the modest entry fee again seems to disuade many from entering.

Each building,whether hall, tower or temple, was set out differently - I loved the wooden furniture and dragon... We were not allowed in any apart from the Tea House, where tea was offered and served in traditional style - and very similar to that of Korea. ... and I learned why Black tea should be served with boiling water whereas Green tea should not. Its all a question of fermentation. Although the tea was free - and welcome - I ended up buying some tea cups. Finally I can drink my O'sulloc green tea (poor excuse I know)

I wanted to try and link the photos to the buildings and area of the park, but frankly its impossible with this map!

The first of the temples - and the only one in Shanghai that we visited (the others being in Pu Tuo Shan). The Taoist temple of Chenghuang Miao (Temple of the Town Gods) dates back to the Ming dynasty. The vases may give that away. This one is tucked away in the hustling tourist trap of Shanghai Old Street. Fortunately the modest price of 10 Yuan calms the flow of people who enter but those that do burn so much incense that its insane. Check out those statues and wallpaper backdrop! Oh and if you think I'm knowledgeable, I'm not. I looked it up afterwards!

Shanghai Old Street is old. Really old. Apparently. But I reckon all of that wood has been replaced a fair few times. If you really want to experience large crowds that don't know where they are going (and to be fair, you'd probably be one of them, like we were) then this is the place to go. Lots of shops to buy cheap (and not so cheap) tack, street artists and some cool wood carvings are all around you. We popped into a tea shop, no sorry, the tea shop in the middle of it all. Looks like a boat on the inside, and I really liked the bloke with the puppet theatre, hitting his drums and bells, citing his repertoire whilst kids looked through the viewing glasses.

Shanghai Jazz Clubs

Shanghai is known for its good Jazz. Helpfully, one of my colleagues at work, who shall remain nameless, Toby, sent me a link to a decent club. In New York. Fortunately the Lonely Planet came to the rescue and mentioned the Old Jazz Band (average age of 80), in a hotel just round the corner So we went, listened, and scoffed some nice (but expensive) wine.

The Old Jazz Band at the Peace Hotel

Rooftop Bars

Lonely Planet again... to a rooftop bar. The good news was that there were loads of tables outside. The bad news is that it started to rain. Still preferred to stay outside though. They had these fancy lights on the table so we took a few photos too :-)

Mystic Claudia

Liquid Laundry

After eating at the Spice Factory, we discovered a Brew pub. We went back there to try some of the local brews. All in the interests of cultural understanding, you know.

There were very few Chinese. They obviously don't understand the expat culture! In fact there were a few less beers than anticipated as well. Shanghai had some kind of Brew Pub festival going on that week. Still, it hadn't actually run out and we only had time for one beer before the metro stopped working (at 10:15pm). A taxi was also out of the window as I had to be up early at stupid o'clock in order to catch the flight back out. And as it turned out I didn't actually have enough money to pay for that either!

Final Night in Shanghai

The Bund

One of the spectacular displays in Shanghai is the vast wattage of lights on show across the river. All day had been cloudy and threatening us with rain, and the top of the buildings disappeared in cloud colour. No bottle opener to be seen... Still a pretty impressive sight though...

I must apologise - these photos are particularly crap as they were taken with a telephone. Still pretty impressive though!

Jazz Bars (again)

So this person I refused to name (Toby) sent me through another link... this time to a club in Shanghai. After half an hour of negotiation with the metro staff (involving hand signals, impromptu google translations, a lot of shrugging and general failure to communicate, we set off to our destination.

Except it wasn't.

Another half an hour of walking and some more negotiations with restaurant staff who walked us to two bars (both the wrong ones) we gave up and entered a club with live music. And expensive drinks.

The music was good though

In the mood for Murphy's

Chinese Beer

The EndEnd of the night. End of my stay.Claudia will continue on her 3 month trip through Asia, banging her head against the struggle to buy any form of train/bus/plane ticket in China.Whilst she was trying to arrange that, I had a Tsingtao Stout, complete with classic ring pull